life in the bush – our place amongst the gum trees

Tag Archives: apple crumble

I think I’ve recovered, now, but a few weeks ago I had one of those horrible moments when my old computer (read: very old) had been decommissioned and the new machine decided it was going to throw a tantrum.

My new computer, lurking beside my desk….

Matt had been very careful building the new ‘box’ and had moved all my vast amounts of work across before the old computer had been gently put out to rest, but things weren’t going smoothly… so he decided to rebuild.

Fine so far.

He did a big back-up of all my data, and backed out of the first build, tweaked some of the open source installations and brought the newby back up.

Except it didn’t.

When he came to bed after the late nighter, he had mumbled something indistinct about something I didn’t quite understand, and promised me it would all be okay, but, when I rose early to do some writing, what I got was an unintelligible message basically telling me that, well, everything had gone away and the computer didn’t want to speak to me about it.

I knew, in my heart of hearts, that it would be okay. I knew that I had copies of my work on a USB stick and an external hard drive, it was just this restore that had gone awry, and, even if it couldn’t be fixed, it was really only the last couple of weeks of work that had been lost forever.

It is hard, however, to be rational when your brand new computer is behaving like a dead fish and your computer support person is snoring peacefully away at the other end of the house.

I did the only thing I could.

I went for a walk.

And then I made some apple crumble.

And ate it. For breakfast. With vanilla yoghurt. Which all went a long way towards making me feel a lot better and wasted enough time for Matt to wake up and revive my computer, complete with all the data, intact, and (vaguely) happy to speak to me again. Not right away, you understand, but eventually.

I love computers. I’ve been hooked since the day I told my (then) still fairly recently acquired husband that I needed a new typewriter and I rather fancied those clever ones with a little screen that let you type a couple of sentences and make sure there were no typos before it tapped it out onto the paper.

He said, that no I didn’t, and I begged to differ, but he came home with a PC with word processing software, and I quickly learned that this was the answer to all my typo infested dreams.

And then came the internet, and email, and after that, well, me and my computer were inseparable.

Of course, it has been a rocky relationship, with ups and downs and moments of intense frustration, fraught with catastrophes of varying intensity, and times when I could gladly pick it up and throw it out the window… but, on those occasions, a little comfort food goes a long way…

Individual Apple Crumble Comfort

Ingredients:

…apple crumble comfort straight from the oven…mmm…

large apple, peeled, cored and sliced

handful of sultanas

tablespoon of honey

dash of water or apple juice

ground cinnamon, ginger and/or nutmeg to taste

cup of almond and coconut flour combined

generous splurge of macadamia oil

tablespoon of honey

Method:

Combine the apple, sultanas, honey, water and spices in a pan and heat gently, stirring occasionally until the apple has ‘fallen’ (a word my mother uses to indicate that something like apples or potatoes have basically gone all mushy – I don’t know if it is genuine technical term….)

– make sure it doesn’t burn and stick to the bottom of the pan because this only adds to the sense of catastrophe.

(If you are in need of extra comfort and like that sort of thing, you could add a dash of whisky close to the end of the cooking time.)

Meanwhile combine the flour, oil, and the other amount of honey in a bowl and rub them gently through your fingers until you have a sticky breadcrumb consistency. I also add a smidgen of extra spice, but it is a fairly rich topping, so it is up to you.

Pop the cooked apple into a mini-casserole dish and sprinkle the flour mixture over the top.

Bake in a slow to moderate oven just long enough for the topping to develop a nice golden colour – about 15-20 minutes – keep an eye in it, though, because nut flours burn easily.

While it is baking, measure out a portion of plain yoghurt and mix with a little honey and vanilla to dollop over the top when you serve it up, piping hot from the oven.

I ate half for my breakfast and half later on in the day, but you can save it in the fridge for a day or two if you want, and, of course, you can increase the ingredients to make enough to share. I made enough for Matt and Will, too.

If nuts are not part of your diet, you can use any plain flour that works for you, and substitute a different sweet oil or even butter for the macadamia oil. You could also use sugar instead of honey.

My ingredients are SCD legal to meet my peculiar dietary requirements. Unless you can’t eat nuts, it wouldn’t hurt to try it and you will find the richness of the almond and coconut flour adds to the decadence of the treat – all part of the comfort food experience!

Oh, and for the record, me and my computer are back on cordial terms and I am getting used to the new set of quirks that makes this computer an individual in its own right.